I used to feel insulted when my passionate recommendation for “the best book ever” was met with “Honestly, I don’t have time for another one.”
“How could anyone pass this up?” I wondered. Now, emerging (hopefully) from pandemic to endemic living, I get it.
There’s always some message or picture popping up uninvited on my iPad. Sometimes a long-ago “photo memory.” Sometimes an urgent invite to “upgrade” something or other.
But the other day took the cake. As I walked toward the recliner, iPad in hand, up popped this message: Open Word based on location in your home.
I used to feel compelled to start the year fresh. Holiday décor down! Ornaments packed away! Noncommittal winter wreath on the front door.
Not so much this year.
A couple of squirrels are twitching at the base of my bird feeder. One has just attempted to thwart the long cylindrical baffle by shimmying himself up into it. It didn’t work.
I suspect that’s why he’s consulting his bushy-tailed buddy.
“How can we beat this thing?” he wants to know. And within a few minutes, I know he’ll be back – maybe trying the shimmy again. Maybe trying another giant leap from the Japanese maple onto the feeder itself.
Sometimes the antidote to an out-of-control world is to find something that’s actually possible to control. Hopefully, not another human being.
It was with that in mind that I decided, after two years of alerts, to figure out how to undo the AccuWeather notices that I was getting on my phone daily from Eugene, Oregon.
At first, I was thrilled to learn from the neighbors that the chicken bones atop my garbage can were probably not from an intruder snacking in my backyard late at night but simply a raccoon(s).
Raccoons are so cute – adorable little bandits. And I set out to outsmart them by installing a lock on the can. Except for occasionally forgetting to unlock it on collection day, it seemed to be a great success.
Sometimes during Covid, it’s been hard to scoop up a decent entry for my daily gratitude journal. Now, thanks to an enterprising computer nerd somewhere, it’s no trouble at all. Any day I don’t get hacked is a good one. I didn’t get hacked! will be my new default entry.
I never used to remember my dreams and now that I do, I wish I didn’t. They all seem to be about losing things: luggage in an airport, my wallet, the gate.
“It’s probably nothing,” I told myself. Until I started reading those online dream analyses, and learned that this was probably because I had too much going on.
Whack!
I still remember my dad’s swift hand on the rear that afternoon when, looking neither left nor right, I darted headlong into traffic. He held me back, inches from the blue Ford rushing by my aunt’s house.
The whack stung. I cried. Got lectured. But got it. He was just trying to keep me safe.
I’ve relied for a while on the notion that failure is a good thing. We learn from it! I still remember the giddy feeling I had at a coach training session where we were instructed to run happily around a meeting room with post-its on our foreheads that said I Failed Today!